Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness

Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack — the team that would create King Kong — here deliver a breathtaking adventure documentary set in the jungles of northern Siam (now Thailand). A farming family struggles to protect their home from leopards, tigers, and vast herds of wild elephants that periodically stampede through the region. The filmmakers spent over a year living with their subjects, and the footage they captured is extraordinary: real tiger attacks, real elephant charges, and a climactic stampede of hundreds of elephants that is one of the most spectacular sequences in all of silent cinema. The line between documentary and staged drama blurs constantly (as it did in Nanook of the North before it), but the bravery of the filmmaking is undeniable. A genuine adventure film in every sense — made by people who risked their lives to bring these images home.